Chapter 5: The Table's Dinner

The Table met on Thursday in the back room of a restaurant on Passyunk Avenue with no sign over the door.

Eleven old men sat at a long table covered in white linen.

The youngest was sixty, and the oldest had a hearing aid and a cane carved like a snake.

They had known Domenico since he was in short pants.

They looked at me.

"My fiancée," said Domenico, and put one hand on my back, as agreed.

"The florist," said a man with a thick white mustache. "I've seen her shop. Very small."

"It's a good size for one woman and a cooler," I said.

A few of them smiled.

We ate veal, and drank wine, and nobody said anything that mattered until the second bottle.

Then a man from the Port Richmond crew leaned back with his glass.

"What does a girl who does funerals know about this family?" he said, loud enough for everyone.

Fabio, three seats down, took a slow sip and didn't look up.

"My father used to say you can't trust a woman who's seen the inside of that many coffins," said the Port Richmond man.

"She knows what's coming."

A few of them laughed.

I set my fork down.

"Sir," I said. "I did your wife's funeral spray."

The laughter thinned.

"You did?"

"Calla lilies and white stock, with a card that said 'Forty-one years.' You asked me to take the price off the ribbon."

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